The Rangers announced the formation of the Rangers Sports Network, a club-affiliated entity that will handle the team’s broadcasting deals. It’s the culmination of the franchise’s months-long effort to create its own network after its broadcasting deal with Diamond Sports Group (now operating as Main Street Sports) expired at the end of the 2024 season.
“One of the main goals when seeking solutions for Rangers television broadcasts was to give fans more access to our games,” Rangers owner Ray Davis said in a press release. “We determined that the best path toward providing our fans with more options is to handle many of the broadcast obligations in-house.
By forming Rangers Sports Network to address the various production responsibilities for team broadcasts and content, we feel the entity is in a strong position to deliver for Rangers fans as well as execute other potential broadcast opportunities in the future,” Davis added.
By creating their own network, the Rangers can negotiate contracts with different cable and streaming providers to handle in-market broadcasting. They’ve already negotiated one such streaming partnership with Victory+, the platform that also has a streaming deal with the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars. The Rangers plan to announce additional deals with cable and broadcast television providers in the coming days.
Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News writes that those various forthcoming contracts are expected to expand access to nearly every household within the club’s broadcasting territory — which includes not just all of Texas but most of Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arkansas. Grant notes that only a fraction of households could access Rangers games on Diamond’s Bally Sports Southwest, a result of Diamond’s inability to reach distribution agreements with a number of carriers.
The Rangers took a different path than every other team that had previously contracted with Diamond. Most clubs renegotiated one-year deals with the rebranded Main Street Sports at a slightly lesser fee. A few others turned broadcasting rights to Major League Baseball, which will make those teams’ games available in-market on MLB.tv.
Rangers create RSN. Got it.
Hi ho silver!
Yo
Good for them. Taking control of their own broadcasting distribution.
Every team can do this.
Lord – I do think it’s more important for the good teams that plan to contend though, because there’s risk involved if they perform poorly and broadcast revenue drops.
For small market teams, the fixed longterm revenue from RSN contracts protects them when they have 90+ loss seasons.
Considering how many people have cut the cord, I don’t understand why they don’t make their own app? In their shoes, I’d look to stream as many high school and college games as possible year round and make it the north Texas sports streaming platform. That would be more future looking. This cable only model will be dead in 10 years, but maybe that’s too far away for the rangers to care.
The Victory+ deal is the DTC subscription app side of things.
While RSN ‘s/cable are declining, there’s still too much revenue there to ignore.
I bet they play walker texas ranger re runs in the off season
And Roadhouse (the Patrick Swayze version, of course).
or 18 straight hours of a jug music hoedown.
Hee hee! Lisa! Never, ever stop in the middle of a hoedown.
Hockey and Scottish football
If this ends up as advertised, I think it’s great! Less blackouts, if any, for their fans. Maybe it will help with overall revenue. Be nice to see this set a tone for other markets. i.e MIL
If they could have made more by doing their own network, they would have done it before the bottom fell out. Most teams that renewed with Main St. only renewed for next year. The advantage here is Texas has more certainty of their revenue going forward. Others have to hope Main St. remains solvent. I sincerely doubt it increases revenue.
Being seen in more TV households = more revenue.
There is more revenue for large market teams to have their own Networks (which is why the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs went that way years ago). It just requires more capital investment. It’s not so simple to go from having someone broadcast your games to deciding to do it yourselves. The Rangers are very wise to have their own Network and it will be worth the investment.
Good for them!
So, will the games not be on fubo then? Do I need victory+ or is it better to wait and see.
You will have to wait and see, but if its like what happened with the Padres they will be seen on all the carriers they were seen on before and then add a few.
I’ve heard that for the 2025 season you will need to download Victory+ and pay $100 for the Rangers’ season.
Sounds like this will be one of multiple options.
Similar to what the Astros did with the Space City Home Network.
Yes, but that network has both the Rockets and Astros as co-owners. It would have been cool to include the Mavs and Stars in the equation and name it the Texas Sports Network or the DFW Sports Network or something. It’s progress I guess.
And Chuck Norris home gym infomercials
With Christie Brinkley hosting
on one hand we keep hearing that regional tv is dead and more pop up
Only the way MLB does it is dead. They just need to join the 21st century.
Many NBA and NHL teams are having to deal with the same RSN issues as MLB teams, including DSG renegotiating (meaning reducing) rights fees and dropping some teams while it was in bankruptcy.
The NFL, because it has exclusively national broadcast contracts, is the only one of the Big 4 pro sports leagues that has been completely shielded from RSN issues.
This is very similar to what happened with the Padres. The Padres were available in 1.1 million more TV households after Bally went bankrupt because they were able to negotiate deals directly with the cable and satellite carriers in their MLB defined territory.
From what I understand, the Rangers will be available to 4 million more TV households once the seasons starts not including the streaming deal.
RSN’s were not necessarily a good thing for the teams financially. They provided steady revenue, but not necessarily the best possible revenue as the Padres, Diamondbacks and now the Rangers are proving.
It’s nice to have an option for grandpa’s comcast package… but it’s looking like all the money is in ad sales for streaming services. All the big platforms keep trying to get people into their ad tiers by massively discounting the monthly subscription rates.
I loves me my Phillies Comcast boomer cable service!
It’s yet to be seen if the Rangers will be able get anywhere close to the $110 million per year they were making under the Bally’s deal. Theoretically the expanded coverage should allow them to make good money, but they need to find a successful monetization strategy. The number of fans that will pay the $100 annual fee for Victory+ is relatively small.
Bs the rangers fan will pay 60 cents a game to watch them
A hundred dollars is about what it would cost two people to attend one game. They should be able to get that much.
In your face, Yankees and Dodgers!
We welcome the Rangers to our broadcasting fiefdom.
As long as they fix the CF main camera so it’s not a mile high and zoomed a mile out, we’ll be fine. You can barely see the strike zone on any Rangers home games.
They even copied that in MLB the show. I hated playing there.
In their defense, Lance Lynn was pitching for them the first season, and the centerfield camera had to be moved in order to see home plate.
I’d like to know how this will provide the revenue stream the Rangers lost when the network issues started. Will it translate into being able to again pursue top free agents?
MadmanTx 2
From the article I just read in our local paper, They were reaching 2 million fans and now can reach 16.5 million, that should gain an even greater revenue stream. Let’s hope we can chase all the free agents next year.
Yeaaaahhhh!!! That’s what I’m talking about!
This will make the NOLA market happy. They’ve been previous blocked out of Rangers broadcasts by the Trasholes.
The Dallas Morning News exclusive members article states with the new system in place they will be able to reach all 16.5 million homes in the viewing area compared to the 2 million that the other RSN Bally was previously providing, which in turn should be a significantly larger amount of revenue.
They should partner with the Royals and share one another’s territory.
JeffMann
Sounds interesting, but I think they want their own personal network and not have to share or fight over revenue, hence the name, Rangers sports network.
Multiple accounts? We don’t need to read the exact same posts word for word twice. LOL
Every team needs to do this and tell the gamblers and Robby the robot to stick their RSNs where the sun don’t shine.
“All of Texas” and Louisiana??? There’s a team a little south and east of them that might have something to say about that.
Plenty of teams share regions. For example, I think Iowa is claimed by five different teams.
Yankees and Mets share territory. You’ve got this!
You copy and paste other people’s posts? No life?
There’s a whole faction of no lifers here. That’s why I read the comments and occasionally post. High level self defeating entertainment.
Meanwhile, the KC Royals have punted an entire generation of regional fans by being the ONLY MLB team to refuse to sell their product to them.
The Rangers will benefit by this, way better than the broken model they had before. Plus it helps having such a big market to pull fans from. Every team should be doing this…